Aberration

McCrumb’s sensitive second Children of the Consortium space opera (after Recorder) follows the unusual, nameless series heroine into dangerous physical and emotional traumas in her struggle to determine whether humanity is “stardust or creation.” The narrator was given to the Consortium, the solar system’s government, as an infant to be raised as an emotionless Recorder and used as one of the government’s many instruments of control over its citizens. In the previous installment, she lost the drone which enforced her behavior and now she’s slowly learning to feel. Disgraced and considered an Aberration, she decides to free other rebellious Recorders from the Consorium’s totalitarian grip and help her friends, both Recorders and ordinary citizens, defeat a bioweapon that threatens humanity’s existence. McCrumb’s lyrical prose and gentle insights into the heroine’s gradual deprogramming valuably counterpoint the solid technological milieu, which encompasses both convincing spaceship-board life and the eerie, giant-roach-filled Pallas Station. Sci-fi fans looking for character depth will especially savor the narrator’s tender romantic attachment to handsome shuttle pilot Nate. This intelligent celebration of humanity’s capacity for love and self-sacrifice takes the series to impressive new heights. (Nov.)